Technology-Facilitated Abuse in Intimate Partner Violence (IPV): An Exploration of Costs and Consequences

The purpose of the proposed project is to produce greater understanding of the harms victims and the public more generally suffer related to TFA within Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), both those with tangible financial costs and harms that are intangible, with attention also paid to the experiences of minors. The goals are: (1) to document the costs and consequences of three types of TFA (cyberstalking, NCP, and doxing); (2) to estimate prevalence of these crimes via a nationally-representative, general population survey; (3) to provide willingness-to-pay estimates of their costs via discrete choice experiment (DCE); and (4) to use the results of achieving goals 2 and 3 to estimate the costs of cyberstalking, NCP, and doxing within IPV to the United States. This project will be conducted in two phases. Phase I consists of qualitative work to document the consequences to victims of the three forms of TFA in their complexity and interrelatedness. Activities will include interviews with service provider professionals, subject matter experts, and survivor-advocates; a literature review; and three advisory board meetings. Phase II will involve a nationally-representative, general population survey to attempt to estimate (a) the prevalence of TFA in the US, (b) the proportion of it that is associated with IPV, (c) some estimated cost values by asking respondents that disclose victimization about their out-of-pocket costs, and (d) DCEs to estimate the costs to society (i.e., public’s willingness-to-pay) associated with cyberstalking, NCP, and doxing. These estimates will then be used to estimate a total cost of TFA in the US, including the proportion that occurs within IPV. Note: This project contains a research and/or development component, as defined in applicable law, and complies with Part 200 Uniform Requirements - 2 CFR 200.210(a)(14). CA/NCF